Was 2012 the Hottest Year? Alarmists Blowing Hot Air Again

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been caught fudging the climate data again, and its MSM choir, as usual, uncritically reports the doctored data and scary scenarios as facts.

Was 2012 the hottest year on record for the United States? And if so, does that offer any proof for the theory of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming, or AGW? Happily, the answers to those questions are “no” and “no.”

But that hasn’t stopped the usual global-warming alarmists from hyperventilating and offering up the usual torrid headlines. Typical of the so-called mainstream media (MSM) response to a press release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the breathless January 8 video report from NBC News’ Anne Thompson, and a companion print article by NBC News’ Elizabeth Chuck. Entitled, “NOAA: 2012 was warmest year ever for US, second most 'extreme'”, the Anne Thompson piece leads off with this claim: “Last year was one for the history books, as a long-term warming trend brought two record highs for each record low between 2000 and 2010. And even more concerning, in the past year there were five record highs for each low recorded.”

Elizabeth Chuck’s article reported:

2012 was the warmest year on record in the contiguous United States, according to scientists with The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The average temperature for 2012 was 55.3 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.2 degrees above normal and a full degree higher than the previous warmest year recorded — 1998 — NOAA said in its report Tuesday. All 48 states in the contiguous U.S. had above-average annual temperatures last year, including 19 that broke annual records, from Connecticut through Utah.

“We’re taking quite a large step,” said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist from the NOAA National Climatic Data Center, which has recorded temperatures in the contiguous U.S. for the past 118 years.

It was also a historic year for "extreme" weather, scientists with the federal agency said.

“The unprecedented warm weather wasn't contained to the United States,” the NBC report continued, a little further on. “A corresponding rise in global temperatures,” it further claimed, “prompted the World Meteorological Organization to call the rate at which the Arctic sea ice was melting ‘alarming’ in its Nov. 28, 2012, report.”

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